Income Inequality: What Governments Can Do

Many are concerned about rising income inequality. Our attention to this issue has been stimulated by recent books: The Price of Inequality by Joe Stiglitz (a Nobel laureate in economics) and Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (that reached the New York Times Best-Sellers list - a first for an academic economist). Our concern has also been raised by the Occupy Movement which drew attention to how much better the top one percent of income earners has fared in recent years. Is there anything governments can afford to do that can address inequality? In this lecture, Dr. Scarth explains how globalization has made it harder for governments to respond to this challenge, but since he identifies strategies that can make a
difference despite this constraint, his conclusion is one of optimism.